All of the Little Pieces
by AlienZombies
Summary: Arthur's not been himself lately. ARTHURXEAMES


First Inception fanfic! Commence the awkward!

**All of the Little Pieces**

At the start of it, their base of operations is in an old abandoned casino flanked by a meat packaging warehouse and a crusty storage building filled with boxes of colorful plastic watering cans with images of ladybugs and bees on their sides, which had once been a neighboring bar. The wonderful thing about this decrepit little casino, though, is that all of its old toys were still there for Eames, Arthur, Nathan and Sandy to fuck around with. The place had been bought by their client at Cobb's request, because it was just inconspicuous and out of the way enough that they won't be bothered. The windows and entrances are all boarded up, except for the one by the fire escape, which can only be accessed by crawling on dumpsters like an idiot monkey.

They go on weekdays, in the morning, when there is the least amount of traffic and, by extension, witnesses. Today is Tuesday, a week before the extraction job, so they are really more just practicing their paces than prepping for the job. Preparing too much always has them over-thinking it.

Mal, Cobb and Sandy are under. Sandy has always been a fitful sleeper and even under the effects of the medicine, he moans and arches languidly in his sleep, hands bunching and relaxing. Eames watched him for a short while before he grew bored, thrusting the responsibility of making sure they didn't suffocate or break through to soon on Nathan's shoulders so that he could play with the casino things, which he does now with the same quiet independence with which he does most things.

At this point, Arthur is content to focus on doodling mazes and theorizing about a schoolhouse level, when he feels Eames' burning stare at the base of his neck. He pointedly ignores it, though his focus is broken now.

Then, softly, Eames points out, "I can't play craps by myself."

Arthur really, really doesn't want to play craps with Eames, but arguing isn't worth the effort. As far as Arthur is concerned, an argument not had was worth more than a thousand arguments had and won, and this stance has served him well in the past. Nodding, he pushes himself away from his work and settles down for a game.

With the two of them, the thing is very rudimentary, devolved into a game of "who can lose all of their chips first?" The numbers on the board are covered in dust, and stir as the men lay their chips down, causing Arthur to sneeze occasionally. He's vaguely aware of Eames watching him with a hawk's precision, but that's the way he approaches all betting games. He runs his thumb over and over a chip he holds in his hand, his rough, chewed-on nails catching in its grooves, as if this action somehow secures him the good luck to win.

And Eames does win, soon enough. He sweeps his little pile of dusty poker chips to his chest with a sharp little grin. "Shame for you, Arthur."

Arthur glances at him through his lashes and shrugs. "Not as though your winnings are worth anything," he says evenly.

Maybe Eames' smile falters, just a little. He licks his lip, and Arthur's eyes catch on that small motion without his willing it. "Right," Eames murmurs. "It's all a bigger game, _non_?"

Nathan turns to watch them, looking annoyed. Arthur decides that now is a good time to go back to work, and Eames does not bother him.

XX

When Mal, Cobb and Sandy crawl their ways from the depths of the dream world and go about hooking up Arthur, Nathan and Eames, from the corner of his eye Arthur catches Mal toying again and again with a little metal top she had pulled out of her pocket. He frowns thoughtfully. Eames catches his line of sight and comes to the same conclusion.

"What's that, dearest?" he asks Mal in the same patronizing tone one would use on a small child claiming a slimy rock is a magic toad.

From the way her eyes flash, Arthur knows that they've touched on something close to her heart. She snatches the plaything from the table and thrusts it into her pocket with a sharp, short motion. "It's nothing," she says.

Cobb is watching her from the corner of his eye, head slightly tilted like a dog at the sound of a distant drumbeat. "It's something," he says, not quelled by the cold look she shoots him. "It's something brilliant, isn't it, hon? She won't tell me all about it, herself."

"It's just a little thing," she admits now, self-consciously. Her hand goes back into her pocket, and Arthur can make out the shape of her fingers running over the toy's edges. "Just a little thing I pulled from the fire, a long time ago."

"Hmm," says Eames. His eyes have gone into calculating slits.

With a quick hitch in her breathing, Mal looks between them all. "It was just an idea."

Nathan, sterilizing the needles, glances up, his interest caught; Sandy, a little drunk on sedatives, stares at his hands and flexes them over and over to check their solidity. His jaw trembles slightly. In six weeks, he will go to sleep in a freezer and never wake up, the way they all seem to in time.

Arthur sits down in the reclining chair, undoing his cuff and pulling up his sleeve to swab his arm with alcohol. The feeling of the cool liquid soothes him a little, and he hadn't realized that the buzzing of nerves had been flitting about in his mind until just then.

"This," says Mal, "checks reality." She places the toy on the table for them to see.

"She thought of it last week," Cobb interjects. His eyes are shining with enthusiasm. It's a spark in him that starts to fade quick, in good time.

Mouth pulled into an unconvinced line, Nathan asks, "So, what, is it some sort of machine?"

"I'm so glad I'm in the company of such geniuses," Eames replies patronizingly, even though he likely has no idea what's going on, either. "Why, yes, it's obviously a machine. How did I miss it?"

Arthur shakes his head and takes to checking the increasing number of track marks in the crook of his arm. It's beginning to look a bit like braille.

"Let me have a look," Eames says presently, leaning across the table to snatch up the thing. Mal's eyes go wide like a cat's eyes and she snatches it back in a swift little motion that shouldn't have been possible for a person.

At his baffled look, she says lowly, "No one but me can touch it. Only I know its balance."

"Where can I get one? Are they all supposed to be the same?" Nathan asks with a lopsided grin. "Come now, how is this supposed to tell you reality?"

In theory, Arthur supposes, keeping his counsel, it's a good plan. He's woken up before with that dreadful, sick feeling that he's not yet awake, but no way to know for certain.

"I believe," Cobb said uncertainly, "we'll all need our own."

"Our own tops?"

"No. Something else. Something important to you."

"Not to be the bearer of bad news," Eames chimes in, "but not many of us have had devastating house fires in our childhood."

"It doesn't have to be that, I don't think," Arthur tells him. The correction comes without his bidding it, the need to make the facts clear and known.

All at once, Eames has him pinned with that cool, speculative look. His mouth quirks into a bit of a smile, but it's not a friendly one, and Arthur feels the hair bristling along his neck for reasons he'd rather not explore. Believing that he should take the high road this time, Arthur breaks eye contact first with a casual motion, as if his shoulders have a twinge. Eames would know better.

Now Nathan is getting a bit impatient, tapping his foot. "Yeah, great, wonderful," he says. "Look, if we want to make it back to our lives by dinner, we need to start going under sometime in the vicinity of twenty minutes ago."

"Fine," Mal says shortly.

"Explain it later," Arthur offers to her as he takes the needle from Nathan absent-mindedly. She nods at him in a way that suggests she's heard him from a long distance, and he decides to just let it go.

Eames sidles over, taking the seat next to Arthur and winking at him. "See you in my dreams," he coos. He lies back with a deep breath through his nose.

Not dignifying him with an answer, Arthur inserts the needle and waits to feel the two quick beats of his heart before the drugs kick in. It's becoming so easy to just lay back and expect sleep to take him in its arms instantly, like a lover – and it does.

XX

Something about dreams seems to have too much logic, in Arthur's opinion. He's once been in the mind of a teenage girl, an heiress, and her dreams were grand, complex and irrational – forests full of blue trees, talking animals, figures disappearing and reappearing in assembled pieces as needed. He supposes it may be the mark, and most of the people they are extracting have a rigid sense of reality, even in their dreams. That's what makes an architect's job so important.

If he's calculating correctly, the music should kick in after just a few more minutes. Nathan fishes around in the murky depths of the pool, while Eames (disguised quite tastefully, really, as the skankiest tour guide Arthur has ever laid eyes on, named Barbara) casually watches for passing lions. The setting is a zoo – literally – and from what they've learned, the mark may have a fancy for setting them loose while he sleeps.

"I can't find the switch," Nathan laments. "Are you sure you put it in the right place?"

"It has to be there," Arthur replies. "You're supposed to be able to find it in a matter of seconds, you know. I'd rather not improvise."

"Now now, no need to get snippy," Eames pipes up, smiling as prettily as a flower. He adjusts his bright, gauzy floral scarf to the side so that Arthur can get a better view of his unnecessarily large breasts. As if anyone needed any more proof that Eames is gay as springtime.

Arthur, who is very rarely snippy, forces himself to calm down before he gives Eames any more ammunition. Turning back to Nathan, he asks, "Did you find the rock?"

"Of course I found the rock, but not the key."

"The key is attached to the rock."

Nathan stares at him, and for a moment Arthur thinks he might have heard the music – but there is nothing. "It was?" Nathan asks now.

"Was it, now?" Eames echoes, and for once his brow is furrowed in genuine confusion.

Looking between them, Arthur realizes with a cold sensation in his stomach that they are serious. "Of course it is," he replies, though he is now much less certain. "You didn't know? Well, no wonder it didn't come into existence, then…"

"You changed it to the cotton candy stand, I thought," Nathan says, yanking his arm out of the muck. His cheeks have gone red with anger. "That's what you said, after we agreed that drowning me might get a bit out of hand and scare the mark into panicking and not giving anything away, and… But then I wasn't going to argue with you, you know, when you came back to the pond, because I figured you must have talked with Cobb about it and changed your mind."

Realization hits Arthur like a punch to the solar plexus. "Oh," he says, voice going quiet. He struggles to maintain his composure, though embarrassment rushes through his veins like hot oil. "I'm sorry. No, you're right – I did change it."

Without any restraint whatsoever, Eames snickers to himself. He covers his mouth with his hand in a gesture so perfectly feminine, it's a little alarming, but he's always been good at women – even if they do come across as a bit stiff, at times.

Determined not to show just how humiliated he was, not wanting to give Eames that satisfaction, Arthur pretends to brush some imaginary piece of offensive material from his sleeve. His face feels like it's been baked in an oven. "Yes, well," he says, "let's check up on that, then."

Of course it would make sense that with two minds supplying the illusion of the key being in the cotton candy stand, especially since Eames was the dreamer this time, it would come into existence there, instead. It crossed Arthur's mind that perhaps Eames had set him up for this, but it was always a little more difficult to think in the dream world, even when calm, which Arthur certainly was not. He hasn't messed up in a long time, but his focus has been a little off-kilter lately, and with good reason.

As they're walking towards the cotton candy stand, Eames keeps throwing Arthur these snide, smug little looks. He's pleased with himself. Arthur doesn't say anything, for the good of team unity and all; for all it was worth, a tiger leaps from the top of the lunch shack and snaps Arthur's neck, bringing him to the surface of reality with a scream. The other two men stay asleep. The sound of his name rings in his ears – had someone called out to him?

From where he lies gasping, he can see the little toy in Mal's hand. Though it doesn't hurt anymore, his heart is beating violently in his ribcage. He wants one.

XX

Other than a few small hiccups, the extraction goes swimmingly. For a few months, they mostly scatter to their respective winds with their shares and all is well. On one occasion, Mal calls Arthur and talks about her little toy top, now calling it a "totem."

"What if you construct a dream in which the totem lies?" Arthur asks.

"Dom asked me that," she responds, sounding fond. "It cannot happen, because no one else can influence it in the dream, if they haven't touched it."

It all sounds rather convoluted, and Arthur is a little bit drunk because it's Christmas Eve and he's alone once again. His mother died last month. She was his last connection, his weakness even, but now he has shucked that final yoke, the shadow Cobb always demanded he be. Polite calls from Dom, who may as well be his brother, dull the pain as much as aspirin against a car wreck – but it's better than nothing. So, he mmm-hmms politely and smiles through the phone call, and when they both hang up it's amiable but a welcome relief. He doesn't want to think about how they flirt with each other, Dom and Mal, self-satisfied and completed.

Arthur plays solitaire in his silent, bare apartment with a grim face. He relishes the rough texture of the alcohol as it burns down his throat.

XX

"Do you believe in fate?"

Eames glances up from where he was flipping through the mark's files, raising one elegant eyebrow. The wind coming through his slightly opened window teases his hair, and suddenly Arthur's mouth is inexplicably dry. He turns his eyes back to the road, even as Eames stretches and settles back into the passengers' seat. "Isn't it a bit early to be waxing philosophical?"

"It was just a question."

"Why? Do _you_ believe in fate, Arthur?" Eames sounds amused, probably because he already knows the answer. Arthur found out that, quite disturbingly, he's been around Eames enough that the forger can mimic him to absolute perfection, so it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that the man knows something about Arthur's stances on the universe at large.

"No," Arthur answers plainly.

"That's why you're rubbish at gambling. You try to get too serious with it. Afraid to take a chance on yourself, you are."

Arthur takes this opportunity to look at Eames sidelong and raise The Eyebrow.

"Yes, really," Eames says in response.

"Hmm."

"Me, I have faith that I'll always get what I want in the end. You, though… It's rather a wonder that you don't play with loaded dice at craps."

"I really should, just so that we'd be on a level playing field."

"Darling, I'm hurt," Eames simpers. "I'd never cheat you. Are you always so catty in the mornings?"

The rest of the ride is silent (Arthur mentally cursing Cobb all the while for making him go and pick up Eames in the first place), and when Arthur irritably throws the car into park, Eames steps out onto the pavement laughing.

For a moment, Arthur is tempted to just let Eames go, but then he can't stop himself. He gets out off the car, planting one hand on the hood, and calls out, "Mister Eames?"

Cool as a cucumber, Eames pauses at the door and throws an inquisitive look back at Arthur, his shoulders gracefully and casually pulled back. He has lit a cigarette and it hangs from his lips now, smoldering.

"So _do_ you believe in fate?"

The silence stretches. Arthur begins to realize just how cold it is outside, since it is, after all, the heart of winter. His breath makes visible puffs of mist in front of his face, and his fingers burn from where they rest on the freezing exterior of the car, but he can't draw himself back, can't make himself move.

Eames lowers his gaze first, scuffing his shoe across the pavement with a noncommittal shrug. "I thought I already answered that for you," he says, voice unexpectedly quiet. Then he starts walking, turns the corner and is gone towards the warehouse.

"Damn," Arthur says under his breath, nudging the car door shut with his knee. He can't tell if Eames was fucking with him or not.

XX

Cobb has a favorite little torture device that he cheerily refers to as his "Team Building Exercises." A pair of teammates go under for twenty minutes real-time to create mazes, chat, and do whatever else suits them – so that, of course, they are able to better communicate and work in tandem during the job. Cobb and his wife always use it as an excuse to have dream-sex, leaving the rest of the team to awkwardly flail through the social bog and mire that is the dreaded Team Building Exercises.

When Arthur goes under, it's merely an unpleasant block of time spent listening to the other team member carry on while he subtly changes the surrounding landscape until they notice something is off. It's a strategy of his to be sure that they stay on their toes and keep the dream space in the required state at all times. There are other ways that Arthur would prefer to spend his time, but it could certainly be worse.

He knows, because when he goes under with Eames, Team Building Exercises become an hour of pure hell.

No, Arthur thinks now behind of mask of aloof pensiveness, the fires of hell would likely be preferable to this.

Eames is the dreamer. His subconscious is filling the stinking casino – all a handsy lot of people with varying degrees of cleanliness and dental hygiene. When Arthur remarks how cliché a casino, of all things, is for Eames, Eames' face turns a strange shade of red.

"How silly of me," he says softly, with that understated venom of his, "I should have thought of a better place to impress you."

Arthur smiles icily. "Yes," he said. "That would have been nice."

They look at each other for a long while, sizing each other up. Then, Eames laughs under his breath and places his bet on the craps table. After a moment, pleasured by their verbal sparring, Arthur places his, and the projection rolls the dice. They seem to consistently roll in Arthur's favor, which after a while might have had him suspicious of cheating – but why would Eames let him win?

Glancing over, Arthur finds Eames' stare burning through him. "What?" he asks.

Over and over, Eames' fingers play with his chips. He's always had a way of playing with anything he can get his fingers on, like he's ready to run at any minute, always run from the next big thing, just in case it threatened to swallow him. "I'm trying to think of how you keep winning," he says, and maybe he sounds sincere.

It's true. Usually Eames is the lucky one. Arthur cocks his head and says, "You're letting me."

Eames scoffs and shakes his head, but he doesn't deny it.

Instantly, Arthur feels foolish for saying it, but he refuses to let him show. What a display of paranoia! Of course Eames wouldn't do that. But it seemed logical…

"I'd know if you were changing anything," Eames says, as if reading Arthur's mind. He won't look him in the eye, and has taken up a kind of rhythmic swaying from foot to foot. "But you've not caused so much as a ripple in the pond, have you? So it must be me. Odds are only fate in the dream space, after all."

"The dreamer makes his own luck," Arthur replies. "So what are you saying?"

"I suppose it's the most I can give you," Eames says pensively. He rolls his poker chip over again and again in his hand, one of the few he's won. "Isn't it?"

Arthur frowns and opens his mouth to ask, and then decides against it. The projection rolls the dice without them when they don't answer her calls for all bets down.

Very quickly, Eames has become a hive of motion crawling beneath his skin. He pins Arthur with that look, and now Arthur realizes just how close he is, the faint smell of mint on his breath. Were they always that close? They must have been. "A house with a white picket fence is rather out of the question, after all, knowing…"

Uncomfortable, feeling as though he's perhaps walked into a nightmare, Arthur turns his eyes away. Eames has always had a bad habit of setting Arthur up with elaborate and sometimes harsh jokes, but this is going a bit far. "I tolerate you, but you're not being very funny," Arthur says, or believes he has said. Some faint roaring sound has picked up in his ears.

A hard smile snaps onto Eames' face instantly. They both know that smile. "Funny? Isn't it _funny_? You're right, Arthur, that was in terribly bad taste of me."

"Shut up," Arthur says hoarsely, laying down his bet. The roaring has turned into a ringing, and he realizes that the timer is ticking down.

In a cold sweat, drenched in unease, Arthur wakes up and excuses himself to the bathroom, and then goes home.

XX

A dry run. Things are going perfectly, from what Arthur can tell of it. He's stationed outside of the park, approximately a block from where the mark will be exiting the bank where the robbery will go down. He can see Cob running down the street to the established safe zone, where the mark's subconscious won't be able to get to him and his extracted information until the timer clocks down.

Eames is flitting about the edge of a nearby skyscraper, ready, Arthur assumes, to start firing shots down upon them, giving Arthur an excuse to shepherd the mark under the gazebo for cover – to stop him panicking and bringing the whole dream down.

Or so, that was the scenario Arthur had assumed they would be following.

It all happened very quickly. Cobb set up the flare to let Eames know to begin laying down fire. Arthur mentally goes through the motions – grab the mark, guide the mark to the gazebo. But no gunshots come. Arthur looks up just in time to watch Eames swan dive off the top of the skyscraper.

It's just a practice run, so Eames could have done anything – killed gravity, sprouted wings, summoned a thousand pillows – but he does nothing. He plummets with the sickening speed of full gravity and crashes through the wooden roof of the gazebo, crumpling on the pavement with a sound like a watermelon thrown against a closet door. To his credit, he doesn't scream.

For some amount of time, Arthur is filled with white noise. He cannot see, he cannot hear, he cannot move. His mouth is suddenly dry. He waits forever for Eames to move, feeling the visceral pulse of his heart in his fingertips. Finally, he hears a moan, and his feet are moving towards the gazebo against his wishes, yet he can't command them to stop. He's running.

"Mister Eames!"

From this distance, he can see that Eames still isn't moving. The line of his body is uninterrupted, signaling no broken bones, but how would he know? But as he approaches, Arthur can tell now that at least Eames is breathing.

"Mister Eames?"

Eames lolls his head, his eyes glazed with shock. A raw, choking noise comes out of him. _Shit shit shit_.

Without thinking, really, Arthur gets down on his knees beside him. His hands move and flutter above Eames' body all on their own, as though he can somehow heal him with his mind, but bodies have always been an anomaly in dream space. All the while, Eames makes a low chuckling sound.

"Worried?"

"Are you damaged?" Arthur asks, the words catching in his throat – why?

A shudder racks through Eames' body and his lips seem to writhe about his mouth – despite his initial disgust, Arthur realizes with a touch of softness that Eames is trying to _smile_ at him. "F-Fine, darling," Eames says after a moment. Is that blood staining his back molars, or just the light? His hand claws slowly, mechanically against the pavement, as if he can't make it stop. "Well, it d-does hurt… a smidgeon."

For a moment, something washes over Arthur, taking the air with it. An invisible fist closes around his lungs. "Fine," he says, and is impressed with himself for maintaining control despite how coldly the words come. He pulls out his pistol and presses it between Eames' eyes, but something gives him pause. It's never happened before, as he's shot every member on the team at least twice each.

Mute, awaiting his medicine, Eames gazes up at Arthur with something honest in his eyes, no longer shuttered from light. Seeing Arthur's hesitation, he works up another little smile. "G-Go on, pet."

Training clicks into place, and Arthur's body somehow knows to take a deep breath and to let it out slow. No more words, then. Steeling himself, he pulls the trigger.

A few minutes later, he wakes from the kick. Staring at the ceiling, he catches the shape and motion of Eames' legs exiting his line of vision. The taste of metal fills his mouth.

It was as if it had never happened.

Cobb wakes with a shout. "What was it?" he bellows. "What was _that_?"

Breathing in, a deep stuttering breath, and letting out, Arthur soaks in the feeling of the hard concrete floor against his back. Eames returns from across the warehouse – is he limping, maybe? – and knocks back two white pills. The pain isn't real, but placebo effects certainly are.

XX

"That was horrible," Cobb barks, gesturing for emphasis, pointing here and there where it was all wrong. Mal throws in a few sarcastic comments, all smirks and coy flicks of the wrist. Together, they seem almost impenetrable, infallible, _unachievable_. "And you, Eames."

At the sound of his name, Eames finally lifts his eyes from the model Arthur has built, eyebrows raised in question, lips curled in something that is not quite a smile. He taps and twirls his cigarette lighter between his fingers. "Yes?"

"What were you _thinking_?"

After a thoughtful pause, Eames cracks his neck. "I was expecting there to be a lake there, like Arthur said. I was going to make my dramatic entrance."

"There was never a lake," Arthur denies as calmly as he can, though alarm has set up shack in the back of his mind.

"Just like there was never a key on the rock?" Eames shoots back, showing his teeth instead of just sneering, and the suspicion is clinched in Arthur's brain, sure as an inception.

"I didn't mess up," he insists. He looks to Cobb for confirmation, acceptance, _anything_ – but there isn't any. "You _know_ there weren't," he continues, keeping his voice uninflected with some effort. "I showed you the blueprints. Look here, there was always a gazebo, always…"

"You'll fix it, then, won't you?" Cobb says quietly.

His words are like a cold knife slipped between Arthur's ribs. He somehow finds the professionalism to nod, but not to speak. Mal watches him, the corner of her mouth quirked into just the barest smirk, her hand resting possessively on Cobb's arm, and although Arthur adores her, he suddenly hates her with a black viciousness he's never felt before.

Still, he takes up his blueprints and retires to his desk to work, to stare at the papers, to think over and over. He can feel Eames' eyes on him like a cold heat, like fingers on his spine, playing him. Grinding his teeth, he clenches the roles of paper in his sweat-damp hands.

As he sits down, he closes his eyes; when he opens them, he is lying in bed, skin burning with the sleep fever. It was just a dream. His hands tremble and reach for something, but nothing is there – no totem, no lover to ground him. The New York air around him is crisp and silent as the vacuum of space.

He's always prided himself in never melting down, always being the backbone and voice of reason and clarity. Now, he curls on his side in his empty bed and sleeps with stinging and unshed tears cooling on his lashes.

XX

In the morning, a call comes in from Cobb, whose voice sounds gritty like it tends to do when he is under stress. "Arthur?" he asks the minute Arthur picks up, before he can even answer.

"Yes, Dom?" A throbbing headache has started up in the twin pressure points above Arthur's eyebrows.

"Sandy's killed himself, outside of sleep," Cobb says. This is an important distinction to make. "You know he's been at the business longer than both of us."

Arthur takes a minute to process this gloomy information. He'd never been particularly fond of Sandy – the man was twitchier than even Eames, had a blazingly short temper and a very loose grasp on reality –and Arthur was quite familiar with the concept of death, as well… It didn't make it any easier. "I'm sorry," he hears his voice say, tinny and mechanical.

"I guess there's going to be a ceremony on Friday, if you want to drop by. No one knows who he was working with, so we're not invited."

"Of course."

"It's just his sister, mostly."

"I understand." Every muscle in Arthur's body feels pumped full of water.

"Are you all right?" Dom asks now, his voice low.

Arthur doesn't really know, so he doesn't really say. "Why do you ask?"

"You've not been yourself, lately. You're usually… sunnier, is the word Mal used."

A wan smile breaks over Arthur's face, but he doesn't say anything.

"Is it about your mom?" Cobb asks now.

"I'm fine, Dom," Arthur lies.

"Okay. Just know we're here for you."

"Okay," Arthur says. "Okay." They chat a bit, and then hang up.

XX

"Another maze?" Eames teases, leaning over his shoulder. His body is a block of heat.

Arthur doesn't take his eyes off of his work, pencil inching over the page with slow deliberation. "It soothes me," he monotones.

Cobb smiles from his desk. "Such a dedicated worker, our Arthur," he says, almost like Arthur is a prized trophy in his living room. He's in a good mood because Mal sprung the news on him that she is pregnant that morning.

"That so?" Eames nudges Arthur's shoulder, but Arthur senses the move coming and lifts his pencil off of the paper just in time. "So straight-laced, are you?"

Taking a deep breath, Arthur turns around in his seat to shoot him a vicious glare, but he doesn't talk back – like always, he never shouts back. It's always Eames who has the yell in his mouth. Arthur's got the power in his eyes, instead.

In response, Eames just smiles sweetly at him, rocking back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels. He runs a thumb over his stubble, as if pondering a difficult math problem. "I think it'd be a jolly task to unravel you," he remarks now.

Cobb laughs, not aware that he's no longer part of this conversation. "I'd like to see you try it," he says.

It doesn't really bother him, _really_, because it never has. They're always this way. Arthur looks between them, raises his eyebrows in challenge, and resumes his work.

"One day, Arthur," Eames warns playfully, striding back to his own corner.

"I'll hold my breath," Arthur mutters at the paper, but he's fairly positive that Eames heard it, anyway.

XX

Sandy's funeral was a relaxed affair, as Arthur had expected it to be. His family was poor and didn't care for the pomp and circumstance of a traditional funeral, nor were they capable of footing the bill for one (despite Cobb's generous anonymous donation, which they seemed to have spent on a copious amount of strongly-scented flowers).

The place has a thick taste to the air of mildew and sweat. It's a very old church that has likely been around for a while, the severe kind with dark wood, dark drapes on the walls, few lights filtering through the grimy windows. People move between and within the shadows in their dark clothes like specters.

Although Arthur never particularly liked Sandy, he felt compelled to come. Perhaps it's because he never went to his mother's funeral. Perhaps it was the mewling, beseeching little call Mal paid him the morning of, dressed in her black mourning dress, asking him to accompany her and Dom, who always gets so moody on days like this. Arthur can't say no to them, and they know it.

Sandy has been survived by his father and his sister, who don't know anything at all. The devastation and, worse, a complete lack of understanding washes out their features into masks. They didn't notice the madness creeping into him, having missed its cause. And they watch Arthur, now, has he comes up to the open casket and pays his respect. "I'm sorry," he says, mostly to himself, to whoever is listening.

But what was he supposed to do? To Arthur, Sandy looks like he is sleeping, like just a little kick will wake him up.

Bile rises in the back of Arthur's throat. He has to leave.

XX

In New York, six blocks down from the warehouse where Cobb is currently working, Arthur climbs the fire escape of an old building. He's attracted to it because of the old brickwork, its impressive height (it must have once been an apartment complex, perhaps, though it's long since gone to waste). Roof entry is an easy matter, and it seems to have been cleared by others thinking the same thing as he's thinking now.

Up top, he gets a pretty nice view of the city. It's just a bit of the skyline, but it's enough. He breathes in the salty, smogged air, rolls it around on his tongue, and finally just lets his shoulders relax. Up here, the wind tenderly brushes across his face, like a caressing hand, and it's so _nice_. There's a faint monotone rumbling from the traffic of the city, but this street is asleep, is always asleep.

He takes one step, then ten, and now he stands on the ledge. He stares down the six-story drop to pavement below, breathing through slightly parted lips, marveling at the simplicity of it.

"Arthur?"

Very slowly, arms out to keep his balance, Arthur pivots around to see Eames standing on the roof with him, a burning cigarette hanging out of his lips and a plastic bag in his hand.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Arthur asks, and Eames cocks an eyebrow.

"I always come here."

"What?"

Quite patiently, Eames hefts his plastic sack in explanation. "It's my lunch hour." But then his nonchalance is gone, replaced by faint concern. He studies Arthur searchingly, taking a cautious step closer. "So, just what are you…?"

Tenseness ratchets up Arthur's back in pieces. The wind pulls sweetly at him. "I don't see how it's any of your business," he says. He slips his hands into his pockets.

"You know, it's a long way down."

"I know." Suddenly, he really _does_ know. He wants to look back now but can't, stares across that enormous gap between Eames and himself like a man about to drown. His fingertips are freezing cold. "Eames."

Maybe Eames can sense Arthur screaming through his calm and measured words, because he takes another step closer, setting the lunch sack down and not looking back once. He doesn't gesture or reach for Arthur, not your typical tactic for talking someone down from a ledge, but something about that is comforting. Arthur's breath kicks up in tempo. "What are you _doing_?" Eames asks again. "Hey? What are you doing?"

"I…" Arthur shrugs. Unable to meet that questioning gaze any longer, he looks away, at his feet. "I don't know."

"You're not jumping, are you?"

A long pause. Blood roars in Arthur's head. "No," he whispers. He glances over, and Eames is _right there_, watching him intently. Arthur shakes his head at him, palms up, at a loss, for once in his life without answers, "I'm _not_," he croaks around an unexpected lump in his throat.

"Come down," Eames says, almost inaudibly. Somehow he's come close enough to get a hand on Arthur's sleeve, but Arthur doesn't need coaxing. He comes down.

Without speaking, Arthur steps into him, hands coming up as if to hug him, before he stops himself, but Eames seems all right with that. The proximity is it, it is enough. "What are you doing?" Eames asks again, into his ear, and Arthur has been asking himself that same question for a very long time.

"Shh," Arthur answers, and now does grasp at his shoulders, gripping handfuls of Eames' silk shirt, breathing in the sharp smell of his aftershave through his mouth. "Here I am, here."

"All right?" Eames murmurs, one hand against Arthur's waist, a punch of heat in the cold numbness that has coated his whole body. "All right?"

Needing to know, Arthur asks, "Why do you care?"

"I thought it was obvious," Eames says with a faint, breathless laugh. And it was, in Eames' subtle little way, it was. "Isn't it, though?"

Arthur doesn't have an answer for that, but that's all right. Maybe that's fate.

XX

It's two in the morning, and neither of them can sleep. This isn't unusual, as prepping for a job always tends to mess with their sleep cycles anyway, with all of the induced dreaming they put up with. But that isn't the reason, and they both know it. Eames won't sleep until he knows Arthur is good and taken care of (because what if? what if?), and Arthur won't sleep because he doesn't want to dream. His nerves on fire and he feels the incredible urge to do something, something – but he's not sure what.

So they play craps. They bet with dusty old poker chips, in the silence and dim sterile light of six desk lamps, Arthur rolling again and again just for the feeling of an unpredictable outcome.

"Why do you need such order in your life?" Eames asks, rolling his little trinket back and forth again. Arthur wants, needs to grab those hands and stop them, still them, but he doesn't. "Do you have to pick the time and number of your death?"

"Next time I'll check up with you before I do anything, then, is that it?" Arthur says, not looking up from the perfect row he's laid his chips across.

And Eames laughs a short, barking little laugh and shakes his head. "Can't believe this," he says. "Even fucking now, you and your brilliant condescension, can't even take a bit of human concern for your wellbeing, and how Cobb worries about you…"

Arthur, perhaps a bit childishly – no, quite childishly – flings the dice violently at Eames' face. It was like hitting a switch. Eames' reflexes were perfect, of course they were, but one dice still strikes him across the eyebrow despite his attempt at ducking, and that does it. They both freeze, staring at each other, eyes blazing, and God every muscle is pulled tight in Arthur like the strings on a violin, ready to snap with biting recoil. The room is utterly silent, as if holding its breath in shock.

"Don't tell me what Cobb thinks!" Arthur shouts, futilely trying to fill the abyss with noise. All at once, Eames lunges at him, and grabs him by the wrists, and although Arthur doesn't break free, because he could if he wanted, he wrenches fiercely in that grip. "Don't tell me," he spits, "what _I _think."

They're backing up, with increasing speed, feet light on air, until Arthur is slammed bodily against a desk. Something rolls off of it and hits the floor with a loud clatter, cutting through the sound of their ragged breathing. Eames' nails bite into Arthur's skin hard, but he can hardly feel it, too busy meeting that red-hot stare.

"Don't," Arthur says, "tell me how you feel."

A beat, and then Eames lurches bodily forward and claims Arthur's mouth in a bruising kiss, and there is nothing else. Now, it all clicks into place.

XX

Afterwards, as Arthur does up the buttons on his vest with weak fingers, and Eames picks up the chips that have scattered across the floor, a call comes in from Cobb.

"Have you given any thought at all to the totem concept?" he asks.

Arthur glances over at Eames, who stands with his jeans slung low on his hips and a wry grin on his face, and suddenly he has an idea. From the way Eames' face lights up, he has the same one.

XX

"Are you all right?" Cobb asks, sitting across Arthur at the table without asking. Mal stands by his shoulder, hand in her pocket, toying with her little metal top. She probably convinced him to come over, in all likelihood.

Arthur nods, turning the little die over and over between his fingers to see the hand-painted dots. It's perfect. It's a perfect tribute, a perfect symbol, a perfect totem.

"Really?" Cobb presses. There will be a time when this altruism escapes him, but for now it's a strong quality that Arthur has come to appreciate about him.

"Yes," Arthur says at last, looking away from this gift he has made to work up a smile. "I'm all right."

He's surprised, and glad, to find that this is perfectly true, after all.

**-fin**


End file.
